Legal Job Interviews - Advice for Lawyers and Law Firms | |||
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| As legal recruiters for solicitors looking for legal jobs in the UK, we also offer assistance to law students, graduates and paralegals searching for the elusive training contract or pupillage. This page is our information page for interviews - both for the interviewees and the interviewers; further information that may assist you to find a vacation placement, work experience, a training contract or mini-pupillage, as well as for solicitors and qualified lawyers wanting to practice their interviewing skills, whether as employees or employers. We offer the Top 100 legal job interview questions - there are firms using these up and down the UK as we speak! We also provide answers to the questions in our Legal Recruitment Articles, which are updated and added to regularly. We have over 100 pages of free careers and recruitment advice for lawyers, law students and law firms - simply click the above link, our employers pages (for law firms) or visit our legal careers centre. This page provides you with a fascinating insight into the world of interviewing as practised by some partners of law firms. The author of the information on this page is Jonathan Fagan, Solicitor (non-practising) and Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - author of the Complete Interview Guide for Lawyers and a Guide to Writing a Legal CV, occasional lecturer on the subject, and interviewee and interviewer at many interviews in a range of law firms from City firms to sole practitioners. The Complete Guide to Interviews for Lawyers Career Coaching Service - includes Interview practice Interviews - Love them or Loathe them! "Was your childhood traumatic? Did you ever want to kill or seriously injure your brothers and sisters?" Believe it or not, this interview question was actually asked by a large regional firm's recruitment manager to a potential trainee solicitor in 1996. Q "So you want to be a solicitor then?" A "Yes". Q "Oh". This was asked by a criminal partner in a Midlands firm in 2000. The interview ended 10 minutes later. How do you know what to say in legal job interviews when asked questions without either revealing murderous intentions, or from appearing boring. The answer is very simple. Preparation. If you attend for an interview without having previously thought about what you can say, why should the partner asking you the questions bother to think of anything to say to you?He is probably busy concentrating on his next letter to a client he has just dictated in his head whilst offering you a drink. The advice we give again and again is to try and see the interview from the interviewers perspective - what is it that the law firm want to get out of it, and why would they want to employ you? How do you prepare? Simple. Look through the list of questions on our 100 top interview questions page and print them out. Practice answering them - at least one question every day for a couple of weeks. Get someone to ask you questions from the sheet and make sure they listen to your answers. An important point is that if you do not know the answer to a question or cannot think how to respond - be honest and tell the interviewer. Do not rote-learn answers - just have thoughts ready in your head to give out to the interviewer. Trainees especially are at fault here. They often get asked about their legal experience (which they have very little of or only academically based) and end up appearing pompous by waffling on about something they actually know virtually nothing about. Firms are looking for employees - people who will be told what to do within reason, and are prepared to do it to increase the profit making of the firm, but also to improve their own standing for the benefit of the firm. They are not looking for self-centred people with an argumentative streak who pretend they know everything. If you are looking for a training contract, telephone trainees at firms, and ask them what the firm does, what hobbies the senior partner has, and how you should present yourself to the firm when writing in. Preparation is the key, but can never assist you when faced with questions like these: "If I was a client, smelling particularly strongly of camembert cheese with a hint of overripe mushrooms, and I came into your office for advice, what would be the first thing you said to me?" Midlands area - commercial firm 1998. Good luck! Jonathan Fagan, MD - Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Careers Services Resources for Jobseekers
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Advice for Law Students and Graduates Looking for a Training Contract